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It's laughable what you guys blame Watson for. Now it's his fault that Knight isn't a very good basketball player. Wow. I for one am glad he is not playing. He had plenty of opportunities. He failed at every turn. He was given every opportunity on the court. Starting, coming off the bench, playing point, playing off-ball, you name it. Knight is on McDonough's hands as well as his own.

Superbone wrote:It's laughable what you guys blame Watson for. Now it's his fault that Knight isn't a very good basketball player. Wow. I for one am glad he is not playing. He had plenty of opportunities. He failed at every turn. He was given every opportunity on the court. Starting, coming off the bench, playing point, playing off-ball, you name it. Knight is on McDonough's hands as well as his own.

+1

The board seems pretty split on this one. I'm wondering if there's so much hate towards our front office & staff we're willing to blame them for anything. On the other hand there's so much hate towards Knight people seem willing to put the full blame on him. I think the truth is probably somewhere in between and I also believe the bulk of the issue is down to Knight's poor play during the chances that he's been given.

carey wrote:The board seems pretty split on this one. I'm wondering if there's so much hate towards our front office & staff we're willing to blame them for anything. On the other hand there's so much hate towards Knight people seem willing to put the full blame on him. I think the truth is probably somewhere in between and I also believe the bulk of the issue is down to Knight's poor play during the chances that he's been given.

For the record I hate Sarver, Knight ,Watson, and I think I hate McDonough. In that order.

Dear Lord, Please turn this around for the Suns...I don't know how much more of this we, the Suns fan base, can handle before we start cannibalizing the team.

I think some hate Knight more than I hate the FO. I don't hate this FO. I don't have much faith in them, but they're at least competent in the day-to-day and in running an organization. I think McD, as a young exec, has been learning a bit as he goes and could've handled things better (Goran's exit, the M****s Bros, Hornacek's firing). But I think those were missteps and not gross incompetence. The Blabby FO was the definition of gross incompetence. I hated that FO. I don't even hate Watson. I don't have faith in him and think he's over his head, but am pretty much neutral towards him. I hated Lindsey Hunter. I hate Byron Scott. I hate Mike Brown.

I think it's crazy to blame the front office and coaching staff for knights play. That's all on knight. Blame them for over valuing him, because they did that, but it's not their fault he's shooting under 40%

You already know what's going to happen. They won't be able to move him on draft night or this Summer. Then they'll print a bunch of fluff articles before the start of the season on how hard Knight worked in the offseason blah blah blah. How he is looking for a fresh start blah blah. How he is wanting to turn his career around blah blah. Watson and McDo will comment about how great he looks. And he'll come in and stink it up again next yer. It's nauseating how this franchise gets into these situations with players.

Superbone wrote:It's laughable what you guys blame Watson for. Now it's his fault that Knight isn't a very good basketball player. Wow. I for one am glad he is not playing. He had plenty of opportunities. He failed at every turn. He was given every opportunity on the court. Starting, coming off the bench, playing point, playing off-ball, you name it. Knight is on McDonough's hands as well as his own.

I don't blame Watson, I blame McD. When I see that Knight isn't playing, it makes me happy then I get even more mad at McD because he gave up the Lakers pick and $70 million for a trash player who isn't even good enough to get minutes on the second worst team in the league.

I still remember when McD was being a pompous ass and came on Gambo's show and was bragging about how Knight is better than Dragic and that he thought the Suns best player was Morris and Bledsoe rather than Dragic etc.

Marty [Mori Chu] wrote:The poor handling of the Knight situation is all tied to the original horrible idea of having a platoon of PGs on the roster: Bledsoe, Dragic, and I.Thomas.

Don't forget Tyler Ennis.

Suns passed on drafting Gary Harris, Rodney Hood, Clint Capela, Jordan Clarkson AND Nikola Jokic to draft Tyler Ennis. And mind you, they drafted the PG Ennis AFTER having seen Dragic's breakout season and him & bledsoe helping lead the Suns to a nearly 50 win team.

That Ennis pick is the most underratedly awful pick the Suns have made in the last 10 years.

I believe in holding players accountable. But putting 100% of the blame for Knight's poor play on Knight implies that coaching and mentorship are incapable of improving a player. And if you think that, you haven't watched enough of good teams like the Spurs, Hawks, Warriors, Rockets, and others who have guys learn the right way to play and improve year to year. On a better franchise (not team) and with a better coaching staff, Knight would be scolded for doing stupid things and praised / rewarded for doing things right. He would work with coaches on his shooting, passing, etc. He would make mistakes but he'd learn and grow over time. Instead we just throw him out there, he doesn't play the right way, we get mad, try unsuccessfully to trade him, and then we bench him for 35 games straight.

To be clear: Ultimately the biggest F-up here was by McDo in trading an extremely valuable asset, the Laker pick, for Knight. That was an effing travesty, and I will never fully forgive him for it. Now that we have him, his play has been poor, which is on Knight. We are handling him and his poor play the wrong way, and that's on the coaching staff. So there is plenty of blame to go around.

I wish we managed him better, both as a player for our team and as an asset for a future trade.

Sitting knight the rest of the season helps us play more intelligent bball but again he has multiple years left on his deal and couldnt be dumped at the deadline. Maybe there is a small chance he could be dumped in the offseason if another large round of bad contracts given out. Otherwise we have a problem here. I don't see any player sitting out that long and not making some waves about it


I'm going to go out and guess that we give him barbs minutes at some point this season. Basically tell him he needs to play bball like barbs. Ulis is the point guard now, so he cant dick around with the ball and jack up long twos. Drive when the match up is good or drive to create. There were the occasional times this year where he had games where he was driving and dumping off to chriss and len. We never seemed to encourage that and waited way too long to correct his awful habits. A lot of that revolves around the selfish way he plays. If we could get him to buy into the recent more team orientated bball, then maybe we could rebuild him enough to rid ourselves of him the offseason without having to give up anything. But if he goes back to his old ways just yank him for barbs

UglyTruth wrote:

Marty [Mori Chu] wrote:The poor handling of the Knight situation is all tied to the original horrible idea of having a platoon of PGs on the roster: Bledsoe, Dragic, and I.Thomas.

Don't forget Tyler Ennis.

Suns passed on drafting Gary Harris, Rodney Hood, Clint Capela, Jordan Clarkson AND Nikola Jokic to draft Tyler Ennis. And mind you, they drafted the PG Ennis AFTER having seen Dragic's breakout season and him & bledsoe helping lead the Suns to a nearly 50 win team.

That Ennis pick is the most underratedly awful pick the Suns have made in the last 10 years.

And if I remember correctly we mainly drafted Ennis because we thought we'd be able to on-trade him to Toronto (I think). Aaaarrrggghhhh

You should never draft a player to trade him unless you literally already have agreed on the deal.

I think we intended to trade him but also felt like we could still use him. Remember, Bleds was an RFA playing hardball, Dragic was heading into FA after the season. Drafting Ennis and signing IT were, IMO, insurance for the worst case scenarios.

To be clear: Ultimately the biggest F-up here was by McDo in trading an extremely valuable asset, the Laker pick, for Knight. That was an effing travesty, and I will never fully forgive him for it. Now that we have him, his play has been poor, which is on Knight. We are handling him and his poor play the wrong way, and that's on the coaching staff. So there is plenty of blame to go around.

I don't know why people are trying to figure out who has more blame in this situation. Why can't we just accept that nobody involved in this situation has succeeded in doing their job. Nobody. Knight hasn't played worth a damn, cost us a huge asset and then we gave him a ridiculous contract, and the coach hasn't found a way for him to contribute. Three strikes. Move on.

ShelC wrote:I think we intended to trade him but also felt like we could still use him. Remember, Bleds was an RFA playing hardball, Dragic was heading into FA after the season. Drafting Ennis and signing IT were, IMO, insurance for the worst case scenarios.

I think we bought a ridiculous insurance policy. And then another. And then another. Then all the things we bought the insurance for didn't happen, and the ones that did, didn't pay full replacement value...

I didn't think my comments would lead to all of this lol.

Marty [Mori Chu] wrote:You should never draft a player to trade him unless you literally already have agreed on the deal.

Don't get me started on this one.

Apparently the Duns could have traded Knight, but it would have meant taking back a player with a big contract that the other team wanted to get rid of too. Like Rubio or Rondo.